Now you can learn Japanese as easily as you learned English--by listening. Pimsleur immerses the listener in Japanese from the very first lesson. By taking just 30 minutes a day, you can learn Japanese at your convenience and in the comfort of your own home, car or office. No books are required. This "Traveler's Edition" was developed so that you can hear, understand, and speak Japanese without difficulty.

Most helpful customer reviews

Consists of 8 lessons 30 minutes each for 4 hours instruction. I spent 30+ hours listening and repeating each lesson multiple times in my car while commuting. I highly recommend this product as well worth the money. What it teaches, it teaches well. But, only 4 hours of lessons has its limits. The selection of phrases I am sure is good but still, limited due to the fact that it is only 4 CDs. I live on a tropical island and meet Japanese tourists every day, these lessons have been great but I still can't carry on a significant conversation. These CDs, which were easier and had me speaking better than a ... eight week class at the community college, gave me the ability to attempt a conversation with a Japanese speaker. I have just ordered the Pimsleur Japanese One 15 CD set ... . Wish me luck. My recommendation is, if you need to get comfortable speaking a few Japanese phrases like "My name is", "I'm an American", and "I only understand and speak Japanese a little", so that you are ready to go up to a Japanese person and say "Hi", order this product. If you are serious about and want to learn conversational Japanese, skip this product and go for the much more expensive Pimsler Japanese One.

I'm a language teacher and I've sampled several of the Pimsleur basic courses. I've concluded that they're great IF: 1. You're a beginner in the language. If you already know the basics, the leisurely pace and frequent repetition will drive you up the wall. But for a novice, that's just what you need. 2. There aren't any subtle phonetic distinctions in the language itself that need to be explained in writing beforehand. For example, in the Cantonese tape, the word for "you" sounded like "lay" when the female speaker said it and "nay" when the male spoke. This needed to be explained. Fortunately, the Japanese pronunciation is clear and simple throughout. 3. You want a tape that you can listen to while driving or walking. These are perfect for that.So far, I've found the Japanese tape to be the pick of the litter, followed by Swiss German, Haitian Creole, and Western Armenian. I couldn't stand more than a few minutes of German and Spanish, which I already know, but for someone else, they might be just the ticket.Again, if you want a good place to start with Japanese, Pimsleur makes it a walk in the park.

This CD set was a lifesaver! My husband was to take on a project in Japan and I was to accompany him. We had just found out about the trip, and didn't speak a word of Japanese. We were leaving in a little less than a month! This method assumes you know nothing, and takes it from there. You are asked to listen to a word, phrase or sentence, and to repeat it several times, each time hearing the correct pronunciation. This gives you the ability to self correct and adjust -- not to mention remember! Within minutes you are answering a question that was proposed to you in Japanese -- in Japanese! Listening to the language and repeating was incredibly valuable, because face it, you can't learn intonation from a book! The four CD's (with two 30 min. lessons on each) gradually incorporate new words into the network of words you have already learned, making the learning satisfying and enjoyable. You are asked to work with each lesson (replaying it) until you are comfortable moving on to the next, and I found that I personally needed to redo each lesson approx. 4-5 times before I felt really confident about moving on. A little tip -- after the pronunciation of a lesson has sunk in, grab an Eng./Jap. dictionary and look up some of the words you've learned. Even though the system doesn't recommend your following along in a dictionary while you are repeating, this helps you to see the words written in the romanji (English letters). You then realize how you would have unfortunately pronounced them, and gain great insight about silent letters, etc. This helped immensely when I later needed to pronounce words directly from a dictionary or pocket translator! Upon completion of lesson eight (literally on the plane) I was excited to arrive in Japan and see how I would fare. The result?Read more ›

I bought this looking for a quick bit of listening practice, and because it came on CD rather than cassette like most other courses. I took 1 year of Japanese in college several years back, but have not practiced since and was always very weak at aural comprehension, so I wanted a bit of a review before an upcoming trip. Well this course was review alright, of about the first 2 days of a real Japanese course. After sampling about 20 minutes worth of this course I skipped to the final lesson. They were still working on dialog from the very first lesson! At the end of this course you'll have mastered saying "I understand a little japanese.", "My japanese is not very good.", and "Do you speak english?". Dont waste your time. If you're actually looking to learn anything I'd recommend Noboru Inamoto's Colloquial Japanese, (though regretably there are no cassettes for this book, and it uses romanized writing exclusively), or for an course with audio, Living Language Ultimate Japanese. Be sure and get "Ultimate" rather than the other Living Language offerings which arent as good.